Taiwan will continue its efforts alongside other nations and global organizations to help Syrians rebuild their country, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
As a member of the US-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, or the Islamic State, Taiwan remains committed to assisting Syrians so they can quickly return to a stable and peaceful life, the ministry said in a statement, but did not elaborate on how Taiwan is to help.
Since 2014, Taiwan has been a member of the coalition and has been providing humanitarian assistance in war-torn Syria, the ministry said.
Photo: Lu Yi-hsuen, Taipei Times
Through official channels and non-governmental organizations, Taiwan has donated 350 prefabricated houses, a mobile hospital, winter clothing and rice to people in Syria, and to Syrian refugees in Jordan, Iraq and Turkey, who have been displaced as a result of the armed conflict with the Islamic State group, the ministry said.
Taiwan has also provided funding and equipment to help clear mines in Syria, it said.
Last month, a delegation led by Representative to the US Stanley Kao (高碩泰) attended a meeting of ministerial officials from 74 nations and five international organizations hosted by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington to discuss countermeasures against Muslim terrorist groups.
In response to a call by Pompeo, Kao said at the meeting that Taiwan would donate US$500,000 to Nadia’s Initiative — which was founded in 2016 by Nadia Murad, who last year won the Nobel Peace Prize — to advocate for victims of sexual violence and to help rebuild communities in crisis.
US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces on Saturday last week announced that they had regained all of the territory controlled by the Islamic State group, bringing an end to the “caliphate” it declared in 2014.
Following the announcement, the US Department of State said that humanitarian assistance, reconstruction and stability operations would be the focus of its missions in Syria and Iraq.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching